Anger of women incest survivors

Adult women survivors of incest (n = 68) were compared to other women (n = 93) with respect to several questionnaire measures of manifest anger. The vast majority of the research participants were white, middle class, heterosexual, and Michigan residents. Incest survivors were angrier than other women, both in general and at their parents. Anger toward mother and anger toward father were comparable. Few incest survivors blamed either parent for the incest, except in those speciflc cases where the parent was a perpetrator. Not surprisingly, incest survivors were particularly angry at parent perpetrators when they were held responsible for the abuse. Incest occurred in families where other traumas were present, and the extent of these other traumas was also associated with increased anger at parents. Women who identified with feminism and who had participated in therapy were angrier at their parents than were other women. Therapy implications of these results were discussed.This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Michigan by the first author, under the supervision of the second author. The help and encouragement of committee members Margaret Buttenheim, Kathleen Faller, and Sheryl Olson are gratefully acknowledged. Howard Gottlieb, Judith Ballou, Donna Silbert, and Robert Daniels also contributed substantially to this research.Financial support was provided by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Horace D. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan.     

Gender,Interpersonal Orientation,and manipulation tactic use in close relationships

Investigations have focused on influence tactic pattern use in relation to socialized power differences due to gender. We carried Swap and Rubin's (1987) Interpersonal Orientation (IO) variable into the Buss, Gomes, Higgins, & Lauterbach (1987) framework for manipulation tactic use. Subjects were male and female undergraduates (N= 53) who scored either in the upper or lower quartiles of the IO scale. At testing, high and low IO subjects completed a demographic questionnaire and the Manipulation Tactics index with regard to a close, opposite-sex friend. We found that high IO females reported more frequent use of manipulation tactics than low IO females. Males' reported use of manipulation tactics was unrelated to their IO status. The results were discussed in terms of possible adaptive patterns developed by females to deal with perceived chronic powerlessness.     

Racial differences in behavior disorders of children

This study compared black and white children on the Behavior Problem Checklist. Data on 1,162 white and 614 black children were obtained from school records and from teachers and were analyzed using multiple regression analysis of variance. Blacks were judged to have a greater frequency of behavior disorders than whites. A number of interactions of race with other variables were found, and their meanings were discussed.     

Reinforcing effects of prerecorded words and delayed speech feedback on the verbal behavior of a neologistic schizophrenic

The possibility of using prerecorded words and 2-sec. delayed speech feedback as reinforcement in the reconditioning of intelligible verbal responses in a chronic, neologistic schizophrenic patient was investigated. A test situation was devised which involved daily presentation of 100 stimulus word-picture cards to elicit verbal responses. The results indicated that both singly presented prerecorded words and delayed speech feedback apparently strengthened correct and intelligible verbal responding.     

A method for simulating non-normal distributions

A method of introducing a controlled degree of skew and kurtosis for Monte Carlo studies was derived. The form of such a transformation on normal deviates [X N(0, 1)] isY =a +bX +cX ² +dX ³. Analytic and empirical validation of the method is demonstrated.This work was done while the author was at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.     

Multiple anchoring of category rating scales

A psychophysical experiment compared the effects of two different kinds of anchoring upon category ratings of the sizes of squares: (1) single anchoring in which the same square was presented on every anchoring trial, and (2) multiple anchoring in which squares of different sizes were presented on anchoring trials. Subjects did not rate the anchors, only those squares presented on alternate trials as the series stimuli. The major finding was that the two kinds of anchoring have similar effects. As with the single anchor, the multiple anchor establishes a new endpoint for the scale of judgment. The previously demonstrated relationship of increasing and then decreasing contrast as a function of the remoteness of the single anchor (Sarris, 1967, 1976) was found also for multiple anchoring.     

The relative effectiveness of alternative job sources

Vocational research has focused on the occupational choice process and the individual's adjustment to work. Very little research has examined the job search process in which the individual must engage in order to implement occupational choices. This study examines one dimension of the job search process: the relationship between job source and subsequent work experiences. The data reveal that when the respondents initially entered the labor market, those relying on formal job sources tended to work in higher-level occupations and in jobs more closely related to their training than their counterparts who used other job sources. In the longer run, the labor market advantages associated with the use of formal job sources dissipated for the engineering majors but tended to persist for the business alumni.     

Children's use of semantic analysis in the interpretation of missing subjects: Further evidence against the MDP

Preschool and many older children often have difficulty understanding who carries out the complement action (e.g., to go in sentences such asMary promised John to go; this is so, even though they easily understand this information in sentences such asJohn told Mary to go. C. Chomsky (1969) proposed that children's errors arise from the overgeneral application of a purely structural Minimal Distance Principle. Maratsos (1974), however, hypothesized that children err by overgeneralizing a different principle which he called the Semantic Role Principle. According to this principle, the Goal-Recipient of the spoken message, not the closest noun phrase, is understood as the person who carries out the act referred to by the infinitival complement. The two studies reported here were designed to determine which of these principles children use. Preschool children were taught to understand a specially designed novel construction. The children then acted out sentences containing related but novel uses of the construction such that they would respond differentially according to which interpretive principle they used. The results strongly favored the Semantic Role Principle, rather than the MDP described by Chomsky (1969), or a related, more complex MDP described by Rosenbaum (1967). It is further discussed how children's formulation of the Semantic Role Principle, rather than the MDP, might arise from their prior analyses of related constructions, such as the imperative construction, rather than following from an innate preference, as suggested in Maratsos (1974).This research was supported by the NICHD under Grant #5 R01 HD09112-02 given to M. P. Maratsos.